Monday, April 11, 2011

Why I'm Here-With Apologies to Jacqueline Berger

I read Ms. Berger's poem Why I'm Herehere and was struck by it. A long time ago a meme went around with a different poem related to family history and I did two versions of that here and here. Today, for another National Poetry Month entry, I give my take on Why I'm Here.

Because my mother was comfortable with his familyin a way she wasn't at home.And because, years earlier,my father's much older brother marriedmom's youngest aunt.In the blended family gatheringsthey found themselvesthrust together,two quiet people overshadowedby the ones larger than life.I'm here because my mother couldn't conceive.She'd read parenting books since she was a dreamy teenager,rather than those silly fan magazinesAnd because my father was willing to adopt,said he wanted to be a good dad.I'm here because some social worker decidedthis couple would be fit parents in theirlittle third floor apartmentoverlooking a cemetery.

I'm here because a college studentlost her boyfriend,took comfort in the arms of a married man whopretended to not recognize her whenher belly swelled with me.Because there was a lawyerin her Quaker meeting housewho had a colleague whose brother's wifecouldn't conceive.

The rest of the reasons are long gone.

One decides to dress, and go onwith the shopping, and cooking, and cleaning.One decides to go to work at the lab,juggle test tubes and powdersto press into cakes so someone else can sell them.One decides to dance away her sadnessso her dance floor gyrationspulse along the floor,shimmy up the pants leg,and tickle the fancy of a manbored withhis wife and kids.And he decides to alleviate his boredom with a shapely redhead.

I'm here because German Protestantswere persecuted and left homefor a place where a Quaker foundersympathized and promised refuge.Because some Greek family decidedthey were better off in Americathan among whatever ruins they left.

It's good to treasure the gift, but goodto see that it wasn't really meant for you.The feeling that it couldn't have been otherwiseis just a feeling. My familygathers around long tables at Thanksgiving,Christmas, Easter.I've taken over making the baked pineappleand chocolate nut cookies my grandmothers used to make.I wish I could ask them how much butter,how hot the oven though I know how much, how hot.

We've been sitting at these same tables for years so I believe we will go on forever.It's right to give thanks for the random,the unlikely probability that each of us should be here,if not the meaning, the feeling, the changing airand light as seasons pass,that Spring, when it comes,arrives gently.

I invite you to tell me either in comments or your own post, why are you here?

I couldn't put it as poetically as you, but aspects of my story are similar to yours. . .

The college girl, prettier than she knows, bowled over by the attention of a rakish Korean War vet. . . The Michigan farm boy, bringing home his German war bride, childless after nine years of marriage. . . Nine more years, after which she decided she'd had enough. . . A new wife, with three more kids, and making two more together; yours-mine-and-ours. . .

I still need to do more research into the Palatine Germans who left for America in the 1730s, and the troubles that led them to do so (which accounts in large part for both my adoptive father and my birth-mother). . . As well as the hardscrabble Englishmen who populated New England in the mid-1600s, and in the fullness of time, migrated inexorably westward. . .

I have at least one ancestor who may have been a Civil War draft-dodger, and another who left England (just around the corner from Stratford-on-Avon) for Canada with a wife 15 years his senior. . . And another who was a Congregationalist clergyman. . .

So. . . very basic, very human stuff. . .

That whole question of 'How I Got Here' is just endlessly fascinating. . .

I love your conclusion in particular. I'd copy and paste but I'm not sure how to do that on this little "crap-top" I'm using at the moment.

As to your larger question, I'll have to think about that. When I was little, my grandfather gave me an illuminated quotation from the Catechism to keep on my night-table. It was the first thing I saw in the morning, the last thing I saw at night. I still have it:

God made me to know Him, to love Him, to serve Him in this world and to be happy with Him forever in the next.

So there's that, of course, though that isn't specific to me. Maybe I'll let this one rattle around in my thinkertoy for a while...

As Cricket said, but in different words, I'm here because I love you. Of course, you wanted something about my being here in a more general sense, in the world itself.

I'm here because two people loved each other, if only for a relatively short number of years. My coming probably resulted in their being together years longer than they otherwise might have been. Through whatever they were feeling about each other, neither one ever showed me anything less than love. They sacrificed their own comfort for mine, many times over, and put off what was probably inevitable until I was old enough to understand. I am here because of love; first theirs for each other, then theirs for me.